First Woman Professor, 1958
In 1966 the pioneering neuroendocrinologist Mary Pickford (1902-2002) became the first woman to be appointed to a Chair at Edinburgh University.
Mary Pickford was appointed to a lectureship in Physiology in Edinburgh University's Faculty of Medicine in 1939. She had previously worked with Ernest Basil Verney (1894-1967) at University College London and Cambridge University, researching the physiology of the kidney. Shortly before her appointment to the Edinburgh post, her discovery of the antidiuretic effect of injecting acetylcholine into the brain had been an important early indication that acetylcholine could be a transmitter in the central nervous system.
Pickford became a Reader in Physiology in 1952. Her research on the neuroendocrine action of the hypothalamus and posterior pituitary gland led to major contributions to renal and reproductive physiology. Her work in the 1950s on the relationship between the release of the antidiuretic hormone (ADH or vasopressin) and oxytocin helped establish that they were different hormones with different roles. She later investigated how oestrogen influenced the says in which oxytocin and vasopressin affected blood vessels.
In 1966, Pickford was awarded a personal Chair in Physiology. Besides publishing many scientific papers, she was the author of a popular paperback, The Central Role of Hormones (1969). Following her retirement in 1972, she moved to Derbyshire, but returned to Edinburgh a decade later.
Besides her academic achievements, Professor Pickford took an active interest in the welfare of students (particularly women) at Edinburgh University.